Protect Your Website from Hackers

Many business owners, especially those just starting their online stores or catalogue website think that their sites are not hack worthy simply because they’re just starting. Most website security breaches won’t just steal your data or deface your website, they can even attempt to use your server as an email relay for spamming, or even redirect orders to them and acquire items or services with absolutely no charge.

Here are a couple of tips that can help keep you, your site, and especially your client’s data safe from hackers.

Always update your software. Even software from the best companies is at risk of security holes that could leave website open to malicious attack. Regardless, these companies are constantly at work to improve their software and give an update for the latest security solution. It is crucial to update as soon as possible so that you can protect your website from attack. Regular updates also benefit you by receiving extra features.

SSL certificate installation. Adding an SSL certificate on your website is a relatively cheap solution to boost your website’s security.  Web traffic is usually unencrypted, and web pages are sent as clear text across the internet from the server to the visitor’s computer, where their browser will transform the plain text HTML to its intended design. This is very risky and open for attacks.

Installing SSL certificate removes this vulnerability through encryption of all traffic that links between your website and your visitors’ computers.

Caution against too much error message information. Many people agree that error messages allow users to know why they can’t do something, such as login. However, hackers can also use the information provided by your error message for attacks on your website. For instance, if your website uses “incorrect username” and “incorrect password” individually allows attackers to know that their half guess was right. Adding “incorrect username/password” where one may be right, and the other is wrong won’t give them a clue that they got something right.

Secure passwords. Passwords that use amandatory combination of number, characters, and letters are now becoming more popular, but some still don’t make use of this. Dictionary attacks and brute force have a high success rate on accessing accounts where users have used basic and easy-to-guess passwords. Some even use the word “password” as their password. One of the quickest ways to avoid attacks is to choose something that isn’t found in the dictionary. Ask your web developer to include password strength indicators on their registration forms so that users will have an idea as to just how strong created passwords are.

Validate form input. All forms of input must be checked on the server and client side. Attackers can use web browsers to pick up on simple mistakes like missing out required fields or typing words in a field where only numbers are required. For added security, utilizing server-side validation allows detection of potentially malicious attacks such as when an attacker attempts to enter codes to exploit holes.

End Note

To keep your website’s data private and secure, providers like Crazy Domains offers domain privacy protection through official partners like Private Registry Authority. The protection works by shielding your personal information from the public and the global Whois database. This service is recommended for all business type.The Whois domain search database is a list of every single domain currently registered in the world – yes, everyone in the world. And the best way to do this is through domain privacy services.

Take steps now to protect one of your businesses’ most important investments – your website!